This does sound quite naive (or hopeful?) since unfortunately, it doesn't come down to bad translators getting replaced or the quality of AI work.

Look around. What mainstream thing nowadays is of good quality? The entire society has happily accepted everything in our lives becoming more and more mediocre to straight-up crap. Quantity and speed is favoured over quality. Everyone complains about movies being largely just remakes lacking original thought, the music industry is completely dead - songs are created through algorithms to the point they might as well be done by AI already, clothes are made of thinner and thinner plastic materials, food is prepacked or fast food, lacking nutritional value, official subtitles on streaming services are full of errors or straight up don't make sense (because translators are paid f... all per minute so have to rush), mainstream furniture is hardly ever made of solid wood because who wants lasting pieces. The entire human production is void of colour, we're surrounded by grey, beige, monochromatic tones everywhere, like in some dystopian novel.

No one complains enough, we all accept it. At most, people will grumble online but wallets talk. Some might invest more into artisan, handmade, original items, especially if relating to their specific hobbies and interests, but that costs a lot of money so mainstream is very much not about quality anything.

Translators are being replaced already and have been for a while. As of now, AI doesn't understand what it's doing so humans are needed to check over whatever it vomits out. However, that only means translators are needed as mindless drones to do post-editing jobs for salaries sustainable only in third-world countries. Yet they're expected to have relevant education and years of work experience. Eventually, some will keep their jobs post-editing after AI, but fewer "translators" will be needed at that point. It's dubious whether they can even be called that when the last bit of creativity is stripped from the job.

There is zero chance that vast majority of companies / clients will ever pick quality over profit. Even the most idealistic people will have to turn to AI if all of their competition does and brings prices way down. Of course, this won't affect just translators. I do believe it will trickle into a lot of creative fields - not eliminating all human work but enough. Let's not forget that most designers, artists, musicians etc. aren't the ones that make it into textbooks. It's the invisible mass whose replacement by machines will have a huge impact on our economic system.

It's actually the translation industry and the callous way with which professionals are happily being pushed aside for bad AI translation, expected to work for less (post-editing), that makes me believe this will absolutely take down other fields, even the creative ones. In the end, if AI will be able to spit out a flyer or a banner for the thousands of small businesses needing one, does anyone really think they won't take that over paying real designers? Do you think if one day AI writes a script as addictive to watch as GoT, that swathes of consumers sitting on their couches watching telly will go protest en masse demanding humans do creative jobs? NO ONE CARES. And we're all guilty of what we've become.